Project Management Skills

Just as with product skills, each of the project management skills from the 34 competencies will be covered in this blog. A brief description of each will appear below and in next articles, while sections appearing later in this blog will explain each competency more fully.

Where Project Competencies Ar111111e Addressed

Now we will outline the important project management skills needed to get software project management competency. The brief description of the project management skills, competencies 12 through 22, will be introduced here to serve as a roadmap and as a review guide. The project competencies described below, are what most people think of as project management skills. But they are only part of the picture, since product and people competencies are important as well. Furthermore, they do not stand alone, but fit into a more global view. The following figure illustrates how the project life cycle fits within the phases of the product life cycle, which, in turn, is a segment of the phases found in a typical overall business life cycle.

Project competencies 12 through 22 are briefly described in the following sections.

Project Competency 12:

Building a Work Breakdown Structure - Building a WBS for a Project

The backbone of any project is the work breakdown structure (WBS). It explains the steps required to complete the project and their relationship to each other. Not as straightforward as it first appears, there is an art to creating a good WBS that is helpful and usable. "Creating the Work Breakdown Structure" and "Identifying the Tasks and Activities" explain the project management skill of creating a WBS. The material in "Selecting Software Development Life Cycles" influences these.

The following sections describe how to use the WBS as a tool to run the project, and section "Project Tracking and Control" illustrates the use of other useful measurement tools.

"Introduction to Software Engineering""Reliability""Software Metrics""Analysis and Design Methods""Validation and Verification""Use of Tools"

Product and project competencies are essential, but not enough, for project success. The best process analysts, requirements crafters, toolsmiths, designers, coders, and project managers on the planet cannot salvage a project lacking people competencies. Developers and customers are not abstract problems, but human beings with classical requirements. They like to be led, coached, negotiated with, recruited, and selected, with dignity, by project managers who are competent and honest. Ask anyone in our industry if they have ever been in an ineffective meeting, on an unproductive team, the recipient of an insensitive performance review, or had their career aspirations ignored, and you will probably turn up a "yes" for every offense. Project management is not just about developing the product, it is about the journey - products cannot be developed without people. The framers of the 34 competencies believed that all people-related activities are essential tasks, used during the software life cycle.

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